The Smell of Death

Santa Dria has a set of beliefs that involve the practice of divination, communicating
with spirits, and sometimes sacrifice. In today's story, you'll hear a first
hand experience with the effects of black Santadia. The dark Come. My name
is Edward and here is Eddie's true scary story. My story takes place back
home on the island of Puerto Rico. Growing up over there, back in
the early eighties. My grandma from the monternal side, like two apartments down
from us. Most of her friends they practiced a santerteria, which my grandma
was involved in it too. My mom was involved in it. But they
will practice what they call the white santaria, which is apparently the good kind.
My great grandpa from my paternal side, he used to practice the black
Santario. Most of my gudparents that were also involving it. One of them
passed away and I was persisting on my grandma to take me to see him
to the wake. I finally convinced her and she took me with her.
I remember seeing him dressed up in white from head to toe. He had
these colorful necklaces. That's what the people that practice santeria be worrying. I
was getting like this weird smell that I never smelled before. It was a
smell of flowers. We ride it me. I remember that smell sticking to
me ever since then, even at the funeral when we went to the cemetery,
I had to smell that same smell coming out from the dirt. So
I told Maya Aguela. I was like, I was that smell. She
tried to play it off like she didn't knew what I was talking about.
And I was like, do you smell it? And she's like, I
don't know, and I could insisting and she goes, Okay, that means
you're smelling the dead. Ever since then, I only get that smell when
I go to cemetery's, funeral homes, hospitals, nursing homes. To sense
those sadness in the air, it just feels like really heavy. Around the
age of eight, my dad was able to purchase a piece of land to
build a house for us. Two years later, my grandma from the maternal
site. She decided to move out of the public housing herself. Ever since
she moved out, she started getting sick. He was like, jo be
in the hospital. She'll come out, she'll go back in. One time
we went to visit her, I forgot something in the room, so I
told my mom. I was like, MA, forgot whatever it was.
I'm gonna go grab it. So she's like, okay, I'll wait for
you in the car. I went upstairs, I grabbed whatever it was,
get back on the elevator, and I clearly remember present number one, So
I noticed that when the elevator went down, it was like taking forever.
It was like when the doors opened, everything was pitch black, and I
just stood there for a couple of seconds, like, okay, where I'm
at. I'm supposed to be on the first floor. I was like thirteen
at the time, so curiosity got the best of me. I decided to
take I step out of the elevator. I looked to my left. Everything
is pitch black, and I looked to my right and it was like this
deep, long hallway. But at the end of the hallway there was a
light bulb turned on. But then from the light you could see a stretcher
right there on the once you will turn from that hallway, and on the
stretcher you could see the shape of a body that I guess it was somebody
that recently died, and you could see these three shadows hovering over that body.
I don't know if they were fighting for his soul or what was going
on. I just stood there watching him, like I guess it was like
five seconds, but he seemed like eternity. I started seeing those shadows.
They're not hovering over the body, They're like moving towards where I was at.
So I was like, okay, it's time for me to go.
I jumped back on the elevator. I'm pressing the button like crazy to close.
I'm beginning to panic and nothing's happening. I'm like, oh my gosh,
what the hell. Finally the doors start closing, but you could feel
like that like heaviness darkness approaching. And when the doors were closing, you
could see like one of the hands beginning to stick its way through the door.
But then the door shut. So I was freaked out. I was
like leaning against like the end of the elevator. So when it finally went
up the doors open, I just shoot out running from there. I ran
to the car and my mom goes, what's wrong with you? And she's
like, you're pale white. A couple of days go by. It was
Saturday morning. I was even awakeed. I remember hearing the phone going off,
and out of the sudden I just hear my mom cry. I figure
at that point that my grandma passed away. That was a hard day for
every one of us, because we all love my grandma. Moving a little
beforeward, I don't really much remember when we bury her, but I remember
getting that smell, and then for some reason at the wake, I remember
that she started getting in her head what they call it's like lies that people
get on their head, which is I don't know how they get them.
So once they saw that she had that, the guy for the from the
funeral home was like, we gotta bury her like tomorrow. So we did.
When we were doing what we called the belodio, which is people get
together their trains to help the soul of the person that passed away move on
to wherever they're going to move on to, there was this small little wooden
table in the kitchen, and on the bottom of it there was a shelf,
and on top of that shelf there was a bottle of rum right in
the middle of it, all the way to the back, like against the
wall. So as everybody's praying. You just hear a piece of glass on
the floor. It shattered. So when we went to the kitchen, it
was the bottle of rum that it was like broken on the floor. There
was no way that this will fall off by itself. The thing is that
my grandma she used to hate the fact that my grandpa, which it was
my mom's stepdad, that he will drink. So she never liked that fact.
So I don't know if he was my grandma that did it or what
was there. Thing is that he just fell off and he broke. Probably
like half hour after that, my mom she was in one of the rooms
talking with one of her commones, which is like comaree, but we say
commines. So she was in the room talking with her, and I over
her. The lady telling my mom, because she also practice santeria, she
found out that the reason why my grandma kept getting sick and she passed away,
it was because somebody did what they called aravajo. When somebody says he
means that they cast a curse on you in the Santarilla stuff. So apparently
that was the reason why my grandma was constantly sick and passed away. Going
back to the house that my dad was building for us to move out.
You could feel there was something there, but at the same time, I
wasn't short. We finished building the house, we move in probably like a
couple of months after my grandma passed away. But then we started noticing that
at nighttime when we will be in the living room watching TV, you could
sense or feel like something from the eye side trying to look in, and
we couldn't tell what it was. So one day, me and my younger
brother, we decided to turn off the lights, so we were right there
looking and we saw this shadow. Because the windows of the front of the
house were in glass, so you could see through them, you could see
a shadow just hovering through the balcony. Because the balcony of the house it
was like an L shape, so he basically was like half of the house
on the outside, so the shadow will constantly be going back and forth in
the balcony. My dad he had built these two like wooden gates because we
had a dog. Now, these wooden gates, they always remained closed because
the way the house is built is facing to the east, and most of
the time the wind blows from the east, so even if you open it,
the wind will close the gate. At night, you could hear the
gate open and close. We even got to live long in that house because
my parents, both of them lost their jobs. So that's how we ended
up moving to the United States. Once we moved over here, I come
to find out the one day I was talking with my other brother, because
he lives there now with his wife and my two nieces. He was telling
me that one day when they were building the house, which it was before
we moved in. My Grandpa is my dad's dad. He was the one
that helped my dad build the house. He got there like around six in
the morning. We were already like on the final stages. The ceiling of
the house. It was like fifteen feet high from the floor to the ceiling,
and he was like in a b shape. Thing is that my ranampa
before leaving that day? The day before, he pull all the ladders in
this little shed in the back of the house, so everything was locked up,
the tools, the ladders and everything. Apparently the day that he got
there, when he walked into the house, he looks to the ceiling in
the middle of the hallway and turns out that he found a black candle stuck
to the roof of the house facing down, and so you will think that
if the candle is burning the wax, it's gonna drop to the floor.
No, the wax was going up to the ceiling. I don't know if
it was that somebody did occurs on the house or if somebody did some kind
of ritual there thing is that, Yeah, that black candle was stuck to
the ceiling. And there was no proof that they used a ladder because all
the ladders were locked up in the shed that my grandpa building the back of
the house. So how they did it, I don't know, but I
think that's the reason why that shadow was in the balcony. After Eddie and
his family moved to the United States and they started their new lives, many
things changed, but one the type of haunting or curse would continue, and
a love that. So next we move over here. At first we were
renting a house in Elgin, Illinois, that was around in nineteen ninety three
early nineteen ninety four. We only lived there for one year and nothing happening
in that house. My mom started looking for a home to purchase, so
we got lucky enough that we found a house in this town days below Elgin
called South Elgin in Illinois, which it was a nice house, four bedroom,
two bathroom, full basement, and he had a swimming pool and everything.
I guess that's the reason why my mom got it because of us,
so we could swim during the day, you know, everything. Once moved.
We bought the house that morning when we started moving in boxes. My
younger brother he went to put a box in the kitchen and from the kitchen
you could see to the backyard and to the swimming pool. The swimming pool
was empty, no water, he told my dad, and my dad went
to luck. It seemed like somebody reached the lining of the swimming pool.
We came to find out that the lady that was selling the house she was
going throughout divorce and her husband didn't want her to sell the house. So
when he found out that she sold the house, the next door neighbor was
telling my dad that he saw somebody coming in late at night to the backyard
things that it was the lady's ex husband that came to rip the liner because
he didn't like the fact that she sold the house. Basement was like partially
fixed. It's a big basement so you gotta literally, like to get from
one side of the basement to the other, go around in a circle because
they build like a wall in the middle, so it makes you go around
in a circle. When I got to that room where I was gonna lay
the box at that I turned on the light. There was this eight foot
tall statue or some type of monster, and a statue of a devil like
those devil statues. It was like laying on his side with his legs crossed
and with a cigarette on his end. So I dropped the box. I
take off running, and my mom calls the lady and she tells her,
hey, you better come and pick this up. She came picked them up,
and the lady told her, all, I want to apologize about this.
I did told my ex husband that he needed to come and pick this
up because you guys were gonna move in. And my mom and the lady
got to talking, and I guess the lady started opening up to my mom.
And the lady told my mom that apparently her husband workshipped the table.
He was also doing heavy drugs and he also played the Wiji board, and
that's a bad combination right there. There's been so many things that I have
experienced at my parents' house, like, for instance, then it was maybe
like I hear later that we moved in. One night I was it was
like around one in the morning. I was like seventeen at the time,
and I was in the living room watching TV. In the living room there's
like this big bay window, so at night, my dad will turn on
the light from outside. If somebody will walk past, you could see the
shadow on the wall. So I was watching TV. My dog was laying
right next to me sleeping. Now, one thing that I remember that my
grandma had told me was when I was a kid, crazy people little kids,
dogs, cats, and the drunk who see what normal people can see.
When I saw that my dog woke up with that looked like something's going
on. I looked at him and I was like I was wrong, And
then something told me to look at the wall. And when I look at
the wall, I see like a shadow walking by. But then I thought
it was one of my friends because one of them he used to work like
the second shift, so something. And it was a Friday night, so
I thought it was maybe my friend they wanted to come by and just hang
out for a bit, But then at the same time, I was like
late one thirty in the morning, but I was like all right, So
I'm over here waiting for the doorkbell to go off. But a couple of
minutes go by and I don't hear nothing. So I was like, okay,
So I just kept watching TV out of the sun here. I'm not
too so I'm like okay. So my dog guts up and he just started
barking, going crazy, so I tell him, hey, shut up.
So I go to the door and I looked through the peephole. I don't
see nothing. So I go back to sit down and I hear the door
knoight, and I'm like, oh boy. So at this point, I'm
like matter because I thought it was some punk trying to play pranks. So
I go out out there. I opened the door, I go outside.
I stepped in the middle of the front yard and I don't see nobody,
and I'm like, yeah, I think God did on walking out here.
So I'm heading back into the house, the dogs still barking like crazy.
I turned off the TV. I just went to my room and went to
sleep for the dead night. Another incident that happened was I was like nineteen.
At the time, I was working two jobs. I had a full
time job and a part time job. I was working at a grocery store
stocking streets and stuff like that. I remember this one day. It was
a Sunday night to Monday morning. I was dreaming that I was at work
at the grocery store and I remember in the dream my supervisor and his name
is Waupe. He comes out telling me, hey, Eddie, I need
you to go home and we will call him Loope. So I was like,
well, you want me to go home, Looping and he goes because
they ain't gonna work, and I was like, I'm not going home,
and he's like, yeah, you are. I was like, no,
I'm not going. I was like going back and forthing the dream, arguing
with him. At the end, he comes out saying asking me like why
you don't want to go, and I go like, because in the house
smells floored that one floor one. At that moment when I said that in
my sleep, I got that smell that I told you at the beginning,
I will smell when I will work talking to funeral homes and hospitals. But
then when once I get that smell, I hear like a big old boom,
like something hits the floor, and he came from the upstairs. Because
my parents' home is a two story home, so my uncle, my mom's
brother, was sleeping in one of the bedrooms upstairs. My mom's brother,
he had the mind of a child because when he was a kid, he
fell down the stairs. He custom some brain damage. So it was like,
I guess his mentality stay stuck. At that time. Thing wasn't it
was a grown man, but it was like he act like a child.
People get siegers. When I heard that big old boom hit the floor,
it was that my uncle got at sieger. So I hear my mom calling
my for my dad. My dad went upstairs and he helped my uncle.
And that day I decided for some reason that I wasn't gonna go to my
full time job. I decided to stay home and I told my mom.
I was like, I'm not gonna go and work. And also at that
time, my mom she used to send my uncle to this place of like
for people like him with people with down syndrome that will go to this place
to pack like light bulbs. So it was like easy work. So my
mom told me, hey, I said, okay, if I leave your
uncle with you, I don't want to send him to work if he's gonna
probably get another one. And I told her, yeah, it's fine,
and I went back to sleep. I get that smell again, but this
time it was like he smelled like flower sulfur and riding meat. And the
second I get that smell, I hear like another boom that's before and I
was like, oh no, so I get up right away. The second
I opened the door of my bedroom. From my bedroom, you can see
to the kitchen. My uncle was laying on the floor again with another siege,
and I guess he hit the table. He bounced off of it and
he hit the floor and I helped him out. The sieger went away,
but I called my mom and I told her about it, and she called
the ambulance so they could take him out. Meet you at the hospital.
That was that for that day. My mom. The next the following day,
I found out that she went to see this lady in Chicago that was
Santa. She went to find out what was going on because I told my
mom about that smell that I got, so she decided to go to Chicago
and find out turns out that they did another curse on the house, and
whatever it was, he attacked the weakest person, which it was my uncle.
But one thing that I didn't told my mom was that after my uncle
got taken to the hospital, that she was over there with him. When
you go down the stairs to the basement my parents, they have pantry right
there. I went downstairs to drab me something to make me some lunch.
For some reason, my dog will never go down to the basement, But
on that particular moment, when I started going down to the basement, he
chose went running down the stairs. By the second I got to the pantry,
he was already there, barking at a corner. And from that corner
the smell of the sulfur with flour and riding meat was really strong. He
kept barking like crazy, like if there was somebody there. I went around
the basement to that room that I told you where I found that those two
statues, and he went running right after me, and right at that corner
from the other side, the smell was strong and he was just barking and
barking. Whatever it was. That's where it was standing at. Moving a
couple of years forward when I was like twenty two. At that time,
I was already married my wife at the moment, she was pregnant with my
son. When we got married, we were living in the basement on my
parents. Throughout the time that we were staying there, my daughter had an
imaginary friend. She will call him Sky. Now. To me, I
knew it wasn't nothing good, but my mom was like, oh, leave
her kids, they got imaginary friends. It's an angel, blah blah blah.
Sometimes we will sit down to eat and I will tell my daughter,
a eat your food, and she's bus ties not letting me eat it.
And that was the first time I heard about it. I was like,
who's Sky And she's my friend. I'm like giving her that look like okay.
So I was like, we'll tell Sky to let you eave No,
I'm gonna beat him up, and she said, oh, Sky is laughing.
I was like, oh is he? So Sometimes she will be playing,
like with her toys, and I will hear her talking or fighting with
somebody and I will go, hey, Mama, who you fighting with?
And she's Sky. He keeps grabbing my toys and he's hiding them. And
I was like what I remember one day my wife at the time, she
told me if I could go down to the basement and get a bottle for
my daughter so we could put her to sleep, because it was already like
around nine point thirty around that and it was a Saturday. I clearly remember
my parents they had gone to Puerto Rico im vacation, so it was just
us in the house. So I go down to the basement mineing my business.
I turn on the first light, go through the first room. I
turned on the second light. Now this worry it get is creepy because when
you turn on the second light, it is like a long hallway and to
your left there's one of those stand up freezers, and then there's a water
softener. Then there's like a little gap, and then right next to it
the scene for the washing machine and the washing machine. Then where my bed
was, it was at the end of all that. To the right.
I turned on the light that was all the way to the end. And
when I turn on the light at the end, I see from my left,
I see something starts creeping out of the wall and I'm like, yo,
what's going on? And out of the sun I just see this thing
tippy toeing on a green and red suit, those suits like the jokers from
the medieval times had like for the kings, with those little bells and everything.
I remember it clearly. It was green and red with those little bells.
As the bells are ringing like in my head right now. I ain't
even getting goosebumps just talking about it. The thing Tippitoe, he stopped in
the middle and he had his hands like t Rex way folding them up as
he was sippy toeing. And he slowly starts turning towards me, and he
looks at me. But then when I took a look at his face didn't
look normal. His face looked like he was like a rat. He looked
like all like sweaty. His teeth were sharp, and his eyes were red.
And this thing chose grinned at me, and then like I froze.
My dad had this piece of pipe like laying right out next to the water
heater, and I saw it, so I grabbed the pipe and I just
I told her that whatever he was took off running and I went after it
because he went running towards where my bed was at. So when I went
around the corner to my bed, and I turned on the light. Whatever
it was he disappeared. That was really crazy, and I told I grabbed
a bottle. I went back upstairs and my ex so the look on my
face and she's like, what's wrong? And when I told her what happened,
she was like, that's not the image. I used to sleep with
all the lights off in the basement before that happened. And once you will
turn off the lights, everything will pitch black, like you could literally pull
your hand in your face and you would even see it like one inch away.
And after that, yeah, I will sleep with a light on.
A grown man sleeping with a light on. Do you know a trucker?
I'm searching for dark stories from the road in both English and in Spanish.
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check out my other show, Scary Story Podcast, where I share short scary
stories. Thank you very much for listening, see you as soon.